Today we’d like to introduce you to Tiffany Brown.
Hi Tiffany, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My mother was an elementary school teacher, and she instilled in me at a young age a love of learning. When I was in tenth grade, she told me that I would make a great tutor and mentor for students younger than me. I took her suggestion to heart and started tutoring at 15. Then, I started my journey of creating what would later become Gillis Education. During college, I continued tutoring and mentoring. I even took educational psychology and public policy courses that contributed to my understanding of how students learn and how our country’s education system works. While I didn’t follow in my mother’s footsteps to become a classroom teacher, after college, I officially formed Gillis Education to provide tailored tutoring services to struggling students, emphasizing preparing them for a successful transition to college. As a college student, there were things that I needed help with, like organizational skills, asking for help, navigating campus life, etc. I wanted to ensure that all the students I worked with felt confident entering college as freshmen and equipped with the tools needed to get the most out of their college experience. I also wanted them to genuinely have a spirit of intellectual curiosity, a pure love of knowledge and educational advancement.
Today, Gillis Education continues to offer high-quality tutoring services. It has expanded its offerings to include homeschooling support, academic coaching, standardized test prep, special education advocacy, and consulting services for academic institutions and public figures. Over the last decade, we have helped scores of students reach their academic goals.
Would it have been a smooth road, and what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Running a small business takes work. One challenge we’ve had recently is figuring out how to scale our business correctly. One of our goals for 2023 is to grow our footprint in new markets to help more students and families while retaining the quality of our products and services. Expanding the number of families we work with in major cities and surrounding areas, like the St. Louis metropolitan area, has become even more critical in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We realize that the last two years have greatly impacted students academically. And we know that quality, high-dosage tutoring is one of the most effective ways we can help students recover from pandemic-induced learning loss.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about Gillis Education LLC?
Gillis Education is different from other tutoring companies mainly because of our focus on customization. Every product and service is targeted. We realize that every student is different and that families have specific needs. This calls for a personalized approach. We aim to meet students and families where they are.
For instance, during consultations with our clients, we design tutoring or academic coaching programs that fit the specific needs of the student and their families. Likewise, our BookLove subscription boxes, a product we created to promote literacy, are entirely customizable. These are just a few examples, but we know that this level of customization sets us apart from other companies and organizations and is one of the reasons for our high success rate. Our clients truly become family.
Another thing that sets us apart is our advocacy work. Outside of tutoring and mentoring students, we advocate for education reform in several ways. Our consultants follow legal trends in education and conduct research and policy analysis on various educational topics. And we write briefs and position statements to propose changes at local, state and federal levels, all to ensure that our domestic education system is the best it can be for our future generation of leaders.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
It is so important to take risks. If you never take risks in life, you may miss out on valuable experiences and successes. I talk about this often with the students I work with. Try new things, expose yourself to different people and places, and challenge yourself academically, professionally, and personally. You may sometimes get it wrong, but you’ll have learned something new, which is worth the risk! While taking risks is necessary for personal and professional growth, I believe that you shouldn’t leap without some plan when it comes to certain things like changing careers or starting a business. For instance, I love acting on new ideas with my business endeavors, but I always have a Plan B, C, and D, just in case Plan A doesn’t work out.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gilliseducation.org
- Instagram: @gilliseducation
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/100063570552588/
- Twitter: @gilliseducation
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@gilliseducationllc
